3D-printed pizza is aight, but I’m not sure it can ever compete with the real thing.

Today’s Daily Post writing prompt reads as follows: Automation has made it possible to produce so many objects. What things do you still prefer in their traditional, handmade version?

This one’s easy. Pizza. A traditional handmade pizza is still totally the way to go. I know NASA’s working on a fancy 3D Printer that can print food—including pizza—in much the same way as when little Johnny prints his book report for Ms. Magillicuddy. But 3D-printed pizza will never surpass the genuine article. No way. Too much tender love and care on the part of the jovial, mustachioed Italian bakers.

I guess this goes for other foods as well. A 3D-printed granny smith apple, for instance. Kind of hard to imagine it’ll have the same crunch and sourness as the real thing. Same goes for 3D-printed chicken soup. 3D-printed orange juice. I just can’t see that stuff ever quite surpassing the foods/drinks that inspired them.

Hey, you can go ahead and 3D-print inorganic objects until your face turns blue, I really don’t care. Sunglasses, computer components, smartphones. Hell, those objects aren’t even made by human hands now, though at least human hands build the robots that go on to make those things. One day 3D-printers are going to print the robots that make those things.

Though that’s still not the Cyber Armageddon, because remember: human hands built those 3D-printers that made the robots that made the smartphones.

If you want Cyber Armageddon you have to go even further into the future, where most 3D-printers will be made by other 3D-printers. At that point you start getting into a chicken-or-the-egg paradox regarding what came first: the 3D-printer, or the 3D-printed human that designed it?

Go right ahead, I say. The singularity draws near; soon machines will be smart enough to make their own machines, which are even smarter. We feeble “fleshies” will be obsolete. The robot/human hybrids will inherit the world.

Yeah, it definitely takes some practice, but homemade pizza can be great. Your boys were lucky you were willing to do it. I once lived in a city where good pizza was hard to find, so I taught myself how to make my own pizzas. I got pretty decent at it, but then I moved to a more pizza-friendly area and the need for homemade pizza diminished.

No, it was a round, frozen pizza that you cook in a regular oven. But it still wasn’t very tasty. If I weren’t so lazy I would have walked the four blocks to a great pizza place and gotten some real pizza. But that would have meant putting shoes.

…and those damn 3D printed shoes I’ve got don’t hold up well to walking. Plus I get ink all over my hands from the laces.